


Possession and Other Hauntings

by robynthemagpie_writes



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Swap, Bodyswap, Eventual Smut, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hair-pulling, I genuinely don't know how to tag this, Implied Sexual Content, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Nonsense Physics, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Panic Attacks, Self-Hating Crowley (Good Omens), Sex, Terrible Grammar, Wings, aziraphale's bow-tie, swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 15:29:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20914367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robynthemagpie_writes/pseuds/robynthemagpie_writes
Summary: From the moment they swap, Aziraphale and Crowley are aware of the echoes of each other's lives that they sense whilst living in each other's skin. These memories, these ghosts, will haunt them until they face them.





	Possession and Other Hauntings

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Something a bit different again here. Inspired by pieced-together fragments from the GOBB chattersphere. Flagrant misuse of grammar, made up words, and misquoted Orwell towards the end. As always please let me know if I need more tags. NB. the 'light dom/ sub' and tying up is very light indeed so please don't be dissuaded. Feedback welcome.

Molecules.

No.

Think smaller.

Atoms.

No.

Think smaller still.

Neutrons.

No.

Electrons? Positrons? Top? Bottom? Tau? Strange?

…

…

...

Photons?

Yes.

Photons. We are photons, scattered across the sky, filling up the spaces in the atoms surrounding us.

Photons of you. Photons of me.

Which are which?

I touch one. That one is me. I touch another.

That one is you.

Photons of you filling the spaces in atoms that will never know how lucky they have been.

I have waited millennia to touch you.

You. You. Me. You. 

All around me, everything is you.

Blinding waves of you. Solid parts of you.

Me in you and you in me.

Concentrate.

Yes.

No. Concentrate.

Oh, of course.

I am you. You are me.

Get ready.

\----

Legs stagger, giving way then righting themselves before weight can carry unfamiliar flesh to the floor.

Bright.

By Satan everything is so bright, details shining out that had been muted only moments ago. A pea-green leather cover embossed with sun-bright gold. Creamy white paper stacked in towering piles, glowing in the lamp light.

It is blinding. Why is it blinding?

Sunglasses. No confounded sunglasses.

It isn't only the light.

Sound. Smell. Taste. Touch.

It is all different. Alike but different. 

Seeing with these eyes, smelling with this nose, tasting with that tongue, touching with these skin-covered fingers.

Eyes. Nose. Tongue. Skin.

I am you. You are me.

It is a blessing and a curse tangled up together in one messy corporeal package. It is magnificent and appalling. It is our only chance.

Body straightens, atoms are gathered, attention is focused, twisting the dials on the edges. Then it gets spooky. Is that truly what I look like?

Tall. Lean. Gaunt. Haunted.

_ Demon. _

Amber and aquamarine exchanged, now exchange searching stares. Is this as thrilling for you as it is for me? Do you feel the strangeness I feel? Can you sense the ghosts in my cells? I can sense yours.

There are echoes. Memories. The things these eyes have seen, these hands have held, this tongue has tasted.

How long have I wanted to taste this tongue?

Gazing in wonder at ourselves, taking in every line, every curve, every perfect flaw. Memories flicker behind these eyes like the imprint left over when a camera flashes. I see my face and your eyes tell this brain...what?

Something crimson and dark with white hot edges and I feel it surging in your stomach, this ghost-ache, pooling heavily down low. 

A blink and it skitters away, and I marvel that I have compounded my own belly-ache for you with some memory of yours, lived in a day-dream for a split second. 

I will keep this false memory of you, wanting me with a ghost-ache, and take it with me when I go.

When I leave you.

When you leave me I am drowned by the lonely clutter of this shop. More flashes, more ghosts; you wandering up and down and up and down in this full shop of emptiness, and my heart twists and cracks.

I want to fill every empty moment with myself. I want to fill you up with me like you fill me up with you.

I want to take back the times I feigned occupation out of fear that too much time here would leave me wide open to loving you. 

My fear of falling has made me foolish.

I wander up and down and up and down with you, finding your pillow-soft body fascinating as it moves; collar chafes smooth neck, silk shirt caresses bare chest, cotton-encased thighs brush. 

I cannot believe you have let me inside of you, cannot believe I can feel your clothes against our shared skin, can scarcely allow myself access to these nerve-endings that electrify me. 

I am you and you overwhelm me with these simple things. The belly-surge purrs and I feel your face flush with my desire. I want to see you. I want to touch you. 

I can't. I won't.

This is harder than I thought.

I will sleep. I will find you, the real you, in a dream and be content with that.

I stop on the threshold and my eyes (your eyes) fix on the bed and will not move. If I lie there in your skin will you show me what you do here? Will you show me how you touch this body? Will you let me see your ghosts?

Stop it. Concentrate. You need to sleep.

Yes. To sleep.

A dilemma.

Clothes Must Be Removed For Sleeping.

That was your instruction, one of the care labels you left me for this body.

I don't know if I trust myself.

I will remove your age-softened waistcoat and the tartan bow-tie, the rest will have to stay. 

Yes, I can manage that.

A spotted mirror leans against the wall on cast iron legs and I go to it now, intending to take special care of these things that you love.

My fingers are used to more nimble hosts but I cannot help noticing how lovely your hands look as I undo one, two, three, four, five little brass buttons. 

I cannot help noticing how smooth the velvet has become where your fingers have worked the buttons in and out everyday for years.

I cannot help the goose flesh that spreads as the velvet brushes the knuckles, a tender kiss.

I cannot help thinking of your clever fingers as I undress you with your own hands.

Gentle. Breath.

I lift your chin slightly to better access the neat bow-tie around your neck, and I think of how you must stand here and do the very same thing every night before bed. 

I wonder which side you pull on to free the knot.

I try one and the folds of fabric come undone. 

I have watched you tie this tie before and I know how you do it, have longed to reach out and entwine my fingers with yours as they work their magic on this silk, imagining those fingers tying clever knots around my wrists and commanding me to stay still.

I re-tie the tie how I have seen you do it before. I pull on the other end to free the knot this time.

The folds of fabric come undone and I am coming undone with them. 

I ease the satin-soft material from your neck and draw the length of it through my fingers, your fingers, wind it around my wrist, your wrist, twist it tight, see the skin blanch white underneath.

My heart beats rapidly in your chest.

Stop it. You said you wouldn't.

I can't. I won’t.

I look back up at the mirror.

Aquamarine eyes stare back. Your eyes. My eyes.

\----

Amber eyes stare back. Your eyes. My eyes.

I catch a glimpse of you, me, us, in the spectral half-reflection of the window in this small Eden you have grown for yourself. I know what you have done here, even if you do not. This verdant shrine of glossy foliage can be read like a well-loved book. 

I am not to love them though.

I am not to praise them for their blossoms.

I am not to glory in their perfectly balanced perfumes.

That is what you told me.

I catch glimpses of you here, fractures of light out of the corner of my eye, your eye, and I know what you have done here.

There is a fervour to your ministrations.

There is desperation.

A crazed need to prove that you too can grow a garden. Not all things fall apart at your touch.

Your touch.

Are you touching my body now?

I want to touch yours.

I will touch your garden instead. The tang of petrichor cuts through the parma-violet cloud of flower scents as your fine boned fingers reach out and softly caress a velveteen leaf. Like my waistcoat.

The leaf shivers; I could almost say that I hear it sigh. I wonder where it learned to make that noise, what cause you have to sigh aloud like that in this room.

Move on.

I know.

Move.

Yes.

This body is made of shards and edges and rolling hips, long lean legs, sinewy and tense. It is a serpent curled tightly in a box, charged and ready to be released. It takes practice to move a body used to being moved by someone unaccustomed to feet. I am trying not to be clumsy with you but I rub at the purple blooms growing on your shins.

I need to practice moving you, moving in you. 

I want to move with you.

Saunter. Sway. Roll. Rub.

A glint of gold sticks in my eye, your eye, and I see your Pride And Joy, the Throne you have made for yourself to survey your Little Eden from. 

I sit in it now. 

You can see the garden from here, from a distance though, close enough to see and be seen. Close enough to impose your well-meant Reign of Terror, the only way you think you can show them love.

Grow Better.

Be better because I can't be. 

I can't be saved. Not ever.

This hollow human-shaped snakeskin is not so hollow after all. It holds the echoes of you. The ghosts of the things you whisper to yourself in the darkness. The secrets you mutter when no one will hear.

Angel.

Oh Angel.

Please Angel.

My Angel.

My heart stutters in your thin chest. A phantom just passed through.

I did not hear that, surely I did not hear you say those words that way.

I could though.

I am you and you are me.

Your throat to speak, my ears to hear.

I lick your lips and close your eyes as though I were at prayer. Cough gently to test the sound quality. 

Testing, testing. One, two, check. Check.

Angel.

A whisper.

Oh Angel.

A sigh.

Please Angel.

A moan.

My Angel.

A cry.

Breath fails and the words choke off.

I am panting now, driving myself crazy in your skin with my wishful thinking. Wishing. Wanting. Despairing. 

I collapse into your Throne, heedless of spidery limbs and try, I really do try, to control ourself. Think of something, anything other than the way your breath would feel blowing those words onto my soft skin.

Breathe deep.

Be still my beating heart.

Sit still a while.

Yes, sitting.

This body lends itself to leaning, so I lean into the notion now and practice being you slouched in your Throne, hurling curses and profane proclamations of backwards love to your Eden. The words taste like a sin on your tongue. I wonder if you know that. 

The taste of sin on your tongue from my skin.

Taste. Touch. Scent. Sound. Sight.

Too much, too much.

Not enough.

I'm panicking now.

I close your eyes, push these slim fingers into your ears, clamp your lips tightly shut.

I will see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

I stop then. Open eyes, unstopper ears, unpurse lips.

I am you and you are me and I look and look and look.

There is no evil here, never was. Not even the ghost of it.

\----

Check in.

A park, some ducks. A black swan and a white.

Anything from yours?

No.

No not from mine either.

Yours are mine and mine are yours.

Photons strain at the edges, drawn by the proximity of their familiar molecules.

Don't touch me, please don't even whisper your liquorice breath on me. The strain is too much.

Don't look at me, don't see what secrets I know your eyes will tell and mine would spy about the things I have been doing in the dark behind slit-like pupils.

Alright?

Yes, tickety-boo.

Don't.

No, not that. Alright.

Fine.

Tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow.

\----

The nights are always the hardest. 

You hide in the darkness behind my eyes every night, and every night I dream of you beside me, holding me, telling me that It's Ok that I'm Not.

That you want me anyway. Need me the way that I need you.

That you could love a broken thing.

That was before we played mix and match.

Now I have to see you in the dark knowing that I could feel you in the dark. Could reach out and touch you. Could know what songs your nerves would sing if I played a melody on them with my lips.

The thoughts come without warning and I feel myself expanding, growing hard in you. You growing hard around me.

Stop. It. Now.

I am lying in the dark with your waistcoat open and your bow-tie hung loose around my neck, your neck. My breathing catches in your throat as I try to push you away from myself, try to disentangle my photons from your atoms.

Photons of me. Photons of you.

The ghost comes to show me then. To show me how you touch this body when you feel it stir. I see it. I feel it. Your phantom touch. The weight of you in your hand, this hand right here. The satin smooth rub of skin against skin, the deep-body hum of it building to a tingling buzz.  _ My dear. _

I am you and you are me.

It is like you are touching yourself right now, touching me. I want to feel you, you want to feel me. The ghost moans in my ear, your ear,  _ Please, my dear, don't stop _ .

I fumble and tug and pull at your belt, button, fly, a mad rush of movement in the darkness, desperate to chase that phantom feeling and capture it anew. It is too much for me, too tempting to have you here like this, hear your needy pants and harsh breaths in the dark knowing what I would give to make it real. 

Why resist temptation?

A mad rush. A rush of madness.

Breath. Slower. Breath.

I withdraw my hands from your trousers quickly. Not enough. Away from the bed then. Swing your strong calves off the side then stand and restore order down below. 

I ignore the persistent twitch of you.

I see you in the looking glass once more and I cannot look you in the eye, cannot look myself in the eye knowing the violation I have all but committed against you. 

I am disgusting. 

I am unforgivable.

I am a demon.

It wasn't always like this. I wasn't always like this.

I used to wear gold and white and walk in the rays of the stars that I hung in the skies. 

I used to make beautiful things and give them as gifts to make my heart full.

I used to love and laugh and shine.

That was then. This is now.

I used to teach my stars to sing.

I used to fly amongst them and conduct their symphonies.

I used to have wings.

That was then. This is now.

She liked my gifts at first, my stars made Her smile and my songs drew Her tears.

I was safe and warm and I grew in Her love. 

I grew too little, I asked too much.

And down I fell with all the rest.

Down. Down. Down.

Hell hath no fury like a Mother scorned.

I can say that from experience. Never scorn your Mother. I will never fly again. 

Wings.

I am you and you are me.

Wings!

Oh Angel, forgive me this trespass, but I have to look. I have to see. I've missed them so much.

My excitement shines so much brighter on your cherub-cheeks, eyes gleaming bright as dew as I step back and straighten you up once more. I quiver and quake like a leaf on a tree. I don't know if it is me or you who closes my eyes.

Concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate.

_ Whoosh _ .

I feel the weight of them against your spine, the sensation like stones settling in a groove carved out for them by the tide.

Flex, stretch, flex, stretch.

My heart skips and bounds.

Your throat tightens.

My eyes open.

Screams. Shrieks. Shouts.

NO. NO. NO. NO.

Don't look, don't see this, don't look.

The half strangled sounds break their way out of your clamped throat, my fingers claw at your face unnoticed and I don't know what scares me most - to hear your voice make these noises and see my pain in your eyes, or the image now before me. 

This is no ghost, no tempting apparition. This is a night-ghast, a wraith from the pit.

I cannot drag your eyes from the mirror because I see you Fallen.

Perfectly imperfect you. Dimples, freckles, golden curls, soft belly, wide hips, flat feet.

Black wings.

My photons are here.

Charred, crumpled, torn, fire-eaten and ravaged by my journey through hellfire and misery. They hang limp and useless at your sides like some dead bird picked over by wild animals.

Your photons are with you.

No feathergold here, no pretending. No soft white glow of warmth for me.

Just a vision of what could be if they ever found out.

My fault. My fall. My fear.

I am not you. No more star flight for me.

You are not me. I swear I will never see you like this again.

I am still screaming when we hit the floor and I will scream until we can make no more noise.

\----

A chill runs down your back and I turn to see an open window letting in a gust of cold, wet air from the squall outside. Pulled shut and soft jacket drawn tight, we are still cold. You are so slim and I am used to more...insulation. 

I move further in to the heart of the apartment, if such a bare place can be said to have a heart. 

No, that is unkind, I am forgetting your Eden. That is where you find refuge here.

That is where you spend your time, I know because I catch the flashes of you there as I enter the space, scent-memories sharing years of the loamy scent of earth, nerve-memories pricking the cling of moisture-dampened air on your lips, in the fine hairs on your forearms.

The garden is where you spend your time.

Mostly.

I am better at moving today, more familiar with the pitch and roll of your body, the way you make legs slither and arms slide, the ways you must have adapted to survive in this cage of flesh. 

I am fitting myself into you like a hand in somebody else's glove and I am getting comfortable filling in the edges.

Filling you. Stretching you out until you can take all of me. I sometimes fear that I will break you.

Keep moving, Move Along.

Of course.

The Throne looms large and inviting in the pale wet light of the morning, so I take you there and we sit for a while. 

I read. I drink tea. I do nothing in particular. I think of Check In and wonder why you stayed so far away. I wanted to be near, needed to, but I felt that bone-deep ache pulling me back to myself. 

I suppose that was all.

At least I looked like you had been taking good care of me. Caring for me. If only.

Easy now.

I have been very careful Not To Touch you unless absolutely necessary. Every time I do I nearly jump clean out of your skin. It is more than I can handle. 

But I am not thinking just now and my control begins to slip.

When I am reading and my mind is far away in the landscape of the pages, I touch the hair at the back of my neck. This is something that I have always done, a gesture which means nothing and does nothing but ruffle me around the edges.

You scold me for it sometimes. 

I do not know why. 

It does nothing to you.

It does something now.

It is as though I have summoned your hellfire and piped it into these fingertips. Your scalp prickles and crackles and suddenly it is ablaze with sensation.

Your skull melts at the flame-lick of these fingers and the sensation draws me on, draws your fingers up and forward into the vivid tangles of wildfire you wear like a crown on your head sitting in this Throne.

I imagine doing this to you when you are you and I am me, astonished by the way this simple touch has set your body burning.

I store up the whimpers falling from your lips and hear them again as though I were really making you keen and yelp, you as you and me as me.

I want to make you scream.

Heaven save me from myself.

Hell protect you from me.

A spectre approaches. 

I have squeezed your eyes shut to absorb the pleasure of these fingers against your skin, and in that moment the memory stirs: you sitting here tearing at your hair, writhing as though in agony, face screwed in torment. 

You look possessed by some demon the like of which I cannot tell. A demon aside from yourself.

It is stronger than the others, this ghost-sight in your cells. It splits my vision, diplopia: I see myself sitting here, me as me, and I see you sitting here, you as you, and we are together but apart, separated by no more than a hair's breadth, separated by the vastness of the universe. 

I am you and you are me.

You bite your knuckles until I see them bleed, flick that viper's tongue quickly out and I almost taste the iron and salt there. 

You fidget and turn in your Throne, grinding into the upholstery.

You reach up again to pull and twist at your scalp.

I can feel the ghost-pain of it where you yank at handfuls of your emberglow crown, know you have creased your face in frustration as you sat here, how long ago?

_ Angel. _

Please, enough.

_ Oh, Angel. _

Not enough.

_ My Angel. _

Not even close.

I am aware that my hardness, your hardness, struggles against these spray-paint jeans. You wear these like a second skin. Is it a snake thing, to know that you can shed them and be born anew?

I feel the bead of sweat that trickles down your temple, arduous, prickling, and I want to scratch at it, swipe it away as it distracts me from the ache I feel both now and then, but this is your memory and you like the itch. 

You sit straight, head pressed to the cool back of this Throne, face raised to Heaven, lips parted, panting. I feel your breath ghost these lips, your teeth sink into the bottom one hard as you concentrate.

Concentrate.

What miracle did you perform here?

Show me.

I want to see.

Photons of you.

Exasperated I make to raise your hand, to try to flick away that dampness now running to your knife-sharp cheekbone, to ease something somewhere, to find relief.

I can't.

I can't move your arms.

What miracle did you perform here?

Diplopia.

I see your arms with me in them. Nothing, I cannot move them and I cannot see why.

I see your arms with you in them.

Your arms resting on those of your Throne.

Your bony fingers bone white as they cling desperately to the golden edge.

Your wrists.

Your wrists are all I can see.

Those fine wrists of bone and tendon and nerve and vein. I want to kiss the place where your life would throb there. 

Your wrists tied to your Throne by strips of palest tartan.

My tartan.

Please touch. I want to see. I need to feel you.

_ Only you, Angel. _

_ I can't. I won't. _

_ Oh. _

Is this real? Do I believe in ghosts?

\----

Check in. 

A park, some ducks. A white swan and a black.

I cannot look at you.

I cannot be seen.

What are we doing?

When will this end?

Need something real, something to hold me to this shell, the strain is worse.

Ice cream?

Yes.

Red lolly, white cone.

I can almost taste the fruit with your tongue in my mouth.

The rich cream soothes my burning in the back of your throat.

A prickle at our backs, right down between the shoulder blades. My back, your back, both backs, hackles raised.

Death walks here amongst the living where He has no place, an aberration that scrapes against the fabric of the universe and sets teeth on edge, ears throbbing, nerves firing.

They have come for us as we knew they would, this is it.

Tickety-boo.

Fuck.

\----

Earth. Air. Fire. Water.

_ The creatures outside looked from angels to demons, and from demons to angels, and from angels to demons again; but already it was impossible to say which was which... _ (1)

As above, so below.

We'll have none of it then. We'll have us.

We'll be neither Blessed nor Damned. We'll be us. 

Come for us if you dare. Catch us if you can.

Sword and Serpent.

We'll be waiting.

\----

We have waited, just a day or so. 

The ghosts have been quieter now, since the End of Nothing and Beginning of Everything. These long bones are weary, these joints ache, this mind churns.

They are letting us rest.

It is safe enough now, we think.

That is what we say when we meet to clasp hands on a bench in a pretty Little Eden in London.

It is safe enough to give you back, to take back myself from you. Yes, safe enough.

I will miss resting my hand on the curve of your belly.

I will miss drawing figure eights with my finger on your soft thighs.

I will miss staring into aquamarine eyes as the night passes and dawn comes, knowing that forever more, beautiful Eos will be made dim by the bright depths of those star-filled wonders. 

You turn and stretch out my familiar hand to me, the small ring still where I left it.

I realise that I have not touched you since this started. Not really.

I realise that I have not touched me since this started. Not really.

A swallow sticks in my throat and I almost pause as I lift this hand and move it to meet yours. Mine. 

To touch you would be divine. To hold you. To love you.

I am you and you are me.

Skin against skin.

Steady.

Here

We

Go.

\----

I know what I am now.

Photons.

Photons of me. Photons of you.

Exploding outward into the universe once more.

I was you and you were me.

Which is which?

Let me tell you something true, I can see no difference.

We are both starlight now.

I touch one.

Me.

Another.

You.

Me. You. Me. You.

Can we stay like this? Can I stay wrapped up in you forever?

No.

Concentrate.

Alright then.

\----

I know that you know.

I know what you have seen of me, that my ghosts have visited you just like your ghosts have visited me. 

I know it the second I feel solid ground below me once more.

SHIT. SHIT. SHIT.

Have to go. Can't stay. Need to… Need to… Go. Just have to get away. 

Can't bear to see the knowledge of me that you will have in your eyes. Aquamarine will be too keen for me now, will cut too deep.

Cut to the heart of me.

The deep, dark heart of me where I know you have been.

My demon heart and Dark desires.

SHIT.

I was you and you were me and I should've known this would happen.

_ I know why you are running. I feel it too. You have felt my loneliness as I waited for you to come to me. _

_ You have felt me needy in the dark. _

_ You have seen the secret parts of me. _

_ You have wanted me in the darkness then punished yourself for...nothing.  _

_ I cannot help it. I blush. I am ashamed. Not because you know my secrets, but because I did not have the courage to tell you them myself.  _

_ I, who wielded a flaming sword. My ghosts are braver than me and it haunts me. _

_ I look out at the garden around me. _

_ I am me. _

_ Just me. _

_ It is so lonely in here without your demons. _

\----

I stumble and trip in my haste to get away, to increase the space between us, to hide from your judgement.

I have had a lifetime of judgement already, I do not know how much more I could take.

Trip. Stumble. Blunder. Rush.

I slam the familiar heavy door shut behind me and lean against it, press my head into the cool surface, grateful to feel with my own skin again. 

Less complicated. Less complex.

Breath. Breath deep.

That familiar smell. The scent of a garden. My garden.

_ Your Little Eden. _

I stop mid stride, drop the mister in surprise. What was that? Where did that come from? 

Ignore it. Nothing there.

Bend to pick up the spray bottle.

_ Spray-paint jeans...snakeskin. _

I swing around, casting about like a dog for a scent, what is that? What the Hell is that? I hear something else. 

A sigh. 

From the plants? Nothing to see there. Or...just one thing. One tiny thing. One plant just here looks...loved. Hmm.

_ Like my waistcoat. _

Enough! I can't do this right now! 

I storm and grumble and huff and puff, and eventually throw myself into my chair.  _ Heedless of spidery legs. _

I growl aloud and hear leaves shaking in the plant room ( _ Little Eden) _ . I run my fingers through my wayward hair in exasperation…

Oh.

Oh my.

Oh, Angel.

The touch of my hair is the catalyst. My touch. Your touch. It turns a key and the photons of you come rushing in, the little ghosts of you that have been left behind in me.

_ Little Eden. _

_ A whisper. A sigh. A moan. A cry. _

_ No evil here. _

_ Emberglow hair. _

_ Your wrists. My tartan. _

_ To touch you. To hold you. To love you. _

Who will save me now?

My heart pounds.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Could you love me now?

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

It is the front door.

\----

_ Boom. Boom. Boom. _

_ The echo reverberates through me as I stand here outside your door, the door I have been using to come and go as I please until an hour ago. _

_ Please answer. _

_ Please let me back in. _

_ Please. _

_ The lock turns with a hollow  _ clunk _ that makes me jump in my skin. _

_ My skin. _

_ Yes, I've seen what you've seen of my skin. My cheeks flush. Gently. _

_ The door swings inwards and there you stand, uncertain, unsure, unsteady. Your eyes glow softly in the perpetual gloom of the hallway. Glow with what? I cannot tell. I am uncertain now, I cannot tell whether you want me here or not.  _

_ Hellfire and damnation, I'm here now! I straighten up and step over the threshold, close the door behind me. Turn to face you, trying to look braver than I feel. _

_ I have seen what you want. I know what you need. I would die for you a thousand times. _

_ Say it. _

_ I heard your nightmares and your secrets in the darkness. I know your fears and your dreams, your heartbreak and your shame. I would gladly Fall to save you my dear one. _

_ Say it. _

_ I will. _

_ To love you would be Heaven. _

To lose you would be Hell.

_ Let me love you.  _ Yes.

Don't ever leave me.  _ Never. _

\----

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

We are so close that I can feel your breath on my face now, almost think I can hear your heart pounding in time with mine. It is dizzying, finally being so close to you, feeling that photon pull as a buzz in my head and an ache in my gut.

_ I can smell the sweat on you from your flight here. I can see the slight sheen on your face still. Your Adam's Apple rolls up and down beneath the thin skin of your neck as you swallow, watching me watching you.  _

_ I want to taste you. _

I move closer; we are touching now, your belly pushing up against mine, my thigh brushing gently between yours. 

I could trace figure eights on your soft thighs now and see what you thought of it.

Amber into aquamarine.

Fire and water.

Earth and air.

You do not let go of my eyes as you slowly bring your hands up to the back of my neck, and I am reminded of the first time that I saw myself with your eyes, that belly-deep crimson-dark white-hot pool that flickered before me.

I see it in your eyes now.

That one was you.

Your fingers scrape gently at the hair at the back of my neck and I feel it, the flare of desire and blazing need shooting to my groin, that hungry urgency that you felt here before.

That one was me.

_ I see the embers stoked into flames as I run my fingers up your scalp, and the memory of what you are now feeling burns through me as well. _

_ Your mouth falls open, needy, wanting, and I cannot wait any longer. _

_ I dive in. _

_ Pull you down, come under with me. _

_ Your tongue tastes heavenly, no touch of sin. _

_ The skin at your neck is warm and tastes of salt like I thought it would. I want to taste it all. I kiss you to the rhythm of your heartbeat which I counted out with my tongue. _

_ You whisper now.  _

Angel.

_ Yes. _

Your kisses on my mouth. Your lips. My lips. I cannot tell which are which. Your tongue on my throat is like a ribbon of magnesium tape, flaring and heating as it burns me up. I drag your mouth back up to mine, tasting that tongue.

Divine.

I am hard and hot and wanting. I want you. I need you. All of you. Let me see you.

_ Your fine boned fingers shake as you undo one, two, three, four, five little brass buttons. I see goosebumps rise on your forearms as your knuckles brush the velvet and I feel the echo of it too. You reach for my tie and I hold your hands still. _

Oh, Angel, I sigh.

_ Let me, I reply. _

You step back one half-step and I am trembling, aching to have you in my arms again. You fix my amber with your aquamarine.

Then slowly,

Purposefully,

You take hold of the left side

And pull.

The silk unravels in those clever fingers and I am unravelling too. 

You re-tie the knot.

I am winded, panting, drowning in desire. I reach for you but you shuffle another half-step back and I am forced to wait, to watch you finish the smart little knot.

You take hold of the right side

And pull.

I want to reach out again but know you will step back once more.

I cannot watch you run from me. You will pull me apart like your tie.

I reach down to touch myself instead, to feel some pressure there against the hardness in my jeans. 

Suddenly you are there.

Your hands are on my hands, stopping me.

I moan.

Please, Angel.

_ Not yet. _

_ I take those beautiful wrists in my hands and bring them to my lips. I kiss one, two, three, four pulse points like I wanted to the last time when I watched you tie your ghost-wrists to your Throne. _

_ I take my bow-tie, this thin strip of patterned silk, and wind it through my fingers, your fingers, our fingers.  _

_ I see my phantom wrist wrapped round, blanching where you pulled the fabric tight.  _

_ This is where I tie it around you. Both wrists together. Just enough to bite the skin. _

_ Photons of me. Photons of you. _

_ I want to bite your lip. _

_ So I do. _

You have seen this. My ghosts have told you my secrets. You know then. You know how I think of you in the darkness then tell myself that it's ok if it stops.

If I can't.

If I don't.

If I think but don’t touch.

Look, don't touch.

You know what I want.

And you're giving it to me.

You are me and I am you.

You kiss every one of my close-bound knuckles, eyes closed, reverent. It sends a shiver up my spine and I struggle to stay standing, knees nearly buckling at your touch.

Please let me be on my knees before you tonight.

You see this, you know me, and you take me gently under the elbows and guide me. You guide me through my apartment as though it were your own.

It is your own.

It has been.

I am giddy with fever from your touch.

_ The sight of you like this, giving in to me, letting yourself be guided by me, demon bowing to angel, is almost more than I can take. The persistent throb of my own hardness beats in time with the thrumming in my ears and I feel so alive to your presence.  _

_ You are tied up in my tartan. _

_ I need to show you. _

_ I have to make you see. _

_ You are loved. I want to worship you. _

You sit me in my chair ( _ Throne) _ , alright, Throne, and kneel between my legs before me.

You slip my bound hands over your head,

_ Lovely, _

wrapping your soft supple arms around my waist, 

_ Beautiful, _

pulling me forward into this embrace, 

_ Darling, _

kissing me with renewed fervour.

The belly-pull yearning for more builds with every soft utterance from those kiss-reddened lips. I squeeze you between my thighs and push forward into your stomach, yearning against you, for you.

_ I do not stop you when you squirm forward, feeling you rigid and ready, desperate for more of me. You bend your arms up at the elbows and dig your fingers into my curls as deep as your restraint will allow, pulling at my hair like I have pulled at yours. It sets my body alight, I need to be near you, I need to touch you, I need to feel you. _

_ Wrap yourself around me. _

_ Me. You. Me. You. _

_ Can we stay like this? Can I stay wrapped up in you forever? _

_ Yes. I am you and you are me. _

You release my waist and gently unlatch my legs from where I have wrapped them around your back, kiss me again once, softly, then disentangle yourself from my arms. I lean forward, try to pull you back in to me, but you sit back on your feet, eyes heavy with desire as they fix mine once more.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight buttons I have to watch your clever fingers undo on your sweat-dampened shirt.

One, two cufflinks.

You see me watching with hungry eyes and lift them one after the other for me to kiss. I am clumsy on purpose and can taste your skin mixed with the cool tang of the metal. 

_ Don't think I didn't notice what you did there.  _

_ Wily as ever. _

_ I would be shy now. I would be bashful. I would be nervous of my body, so soft against your firm one. _

_ But I am you and you are me and you are looking at me with such longing, such blatant love, that I feel glorious, desirable as I slip my shirt from my shoulders.  _

_ I examine you, snakecoil taut on the edge of your seat, your whole body pulling towards me, your photons pulling towards my atoms, and know that I could finish just looking at you like this. _

_ Not yet. _

_ You first. _

You snap your fingers and I am naked.

The rush of cool air on inflamed skin is almost enough; I can already feel the dampness between my legs where I am spilling beyond my control. 

You look at me like you would eat me up.

Like you would taste every part of me.

The taste of my skin on that tongue.

I want you to take all of me.

I am yours and you are mine.

_ I lean forward and feel the pressure of you against my belly, skin on skin, hard and throbbing and slick. I lean into it, your body that lends itself to leaning, and capture your answering gasp with my mouth on yours. _

_ I will taste you now.  _

_ The sin of your skin on my tongue is no sin at all. _

_ Lips. Cheeks. Throat. Clavicle. Sternum. Chest. Nipples. Stomach. Umbilicus. Suprapubis.  _

_ I worship it all. _

_ You are worthy of it all, of all this and more. _

I am a wreck of sensation. 

Suck. Blow. Kiss. Nip.

I did not know this body could feel so much.

I did not know that human skin could know the tingle of starlight.(2)

Maybe it only happens when it is kissed by an angel.

I am a ruin of myself, panting helpless, wordless nothings to beg you, implore you, beseech you…

You look at me once more, and who knew that aquamarine could burn white-hot.

You look at me before you leap.

_ I will worship you now on bended knee as you sit atop your Throne with your emberglow crown ruined, wearing my tartan around your wrists. _

_ I take the firmness of you first in my hand. _

_ Satin-soft, life-warm, pulse-throbbed. _

_ The slow up and down up and down sends your amber eyes rolling back in your head, your torso collapsing back against the chair. _

_ Just a little faster. _

_ Grip just a little tighter. _

_ Drag thumb and roll. _

_ Your coiled belly muscles tighten. _

_ Stop _ .

Why?

_ Don't _ .

I won't.

Then you kiss me. There. 

Suck. Blow. Kiss. Nip.

Just a little faster.

My coiled belly muscles tighten.

_ Stop _ .

Ngk.

_ Don't _ .

I won't. I'll try.

_ Don't. _

Alright.

Suck. Blow. Kiss. Nip.

Just a little deeper.

My coiled belly muscles tighten.

_ Stop. Don't. Stop. Don't. _

_ You are nearly crying, working your wrists to try to hold me close, to stop me stopping you. I have never been this hard.  _

_ It's time. _

_ You are near delirium and incomprehensible as I lean up to kiss you gently on your bruised lips and reach down to your pink wrists. _

_ You are mine and I am yours. _

_ I grasp at the silk and pull. _

_ The knot comes undone. _

_ You are mine and I am yours.  _

_ You can do this now. Always. _

_ You can come undone for me. _

You breath these words into my ear and I am already gone.

You barely have time to fix your soft lips around me and I am finished, spilling into you, splitting at the seams. 

I am starlight and photons.

My Angel, I cry.

_ I remember you fumbling in the dark, tugging quickly at belt, button, fly. _

_ You finish and I think that will be all, that will be the end of our devotion for today. _

_ I am rigid and ready but I will wait for you, I think. _

_ But then your hands are there, tugging quickly at belt, button, fly, and you are wanting me still, wanting all of me. _

_ You beg. _

Worship me. I want all of you.

Move with me.

Move in me.

Possess me.

It is quick, the stretch and burn and fullness, but it is perfect.

It is starlight again.

First photons of you and then photons of me. We are stretched across the universe for anyone to see and we revel in the beauty of it.

We belong to us.

Feathergold.

Blackened.

Angel.

Demon.

Blessed.

Damned.

Photons.

Love.

\----

\----

(1) Gratuitous misuse of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

(2) I’m fairly certain that I stole this idea from something Philip Pullman wrote about the witches in His Dark Materials.

<https://robynthemagpie.tumblr.com/post/188268281943/possessions-and-other-hauntings>


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